


Trauma

by stilesune



Series: Aftermath [1]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Buckley Family Feels, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Unrequited Love, or so he thinks but a sequel will fix that soon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24043927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilesune/pseuds/stilesune
Summary: The drive is quiet until Buck’s mouth gets ahead of his brain, “Are you okay?”Eddie seems a little surprised by the question, shrugs it off, “I can’t imagine what Cap is going through…”“That’s not what I asked and not exactly true.” Buck interrupts. Eddie glances at him sharply.---Spoilers for 3.17.Rating for subject matter and language. Mentions past traumas characters have experienced as well as anxiety attacks. Please be in a safe mental space if you choose to read while being affected by anything that may be a trigger.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Aftermath [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734667
Comments: 6
Kudos: 245





	Trauma

**Author's Note:**

> This tackles traumas, past and present, on 9-1-1 through Buck's perspective. Featured are Athena's assault, Maddie's assault, and Buck acknowledging his team's various traumas. This piece has some Fire Fam Feels and also depicts anxiety attack symptoms. Please take care while reading. 
> 
> **Contains spoilers for the most recent episode.**

It’s quiet. The silence ringing, defeaning in the cab as they drive back to the house from the hospital. It’s just him and Eddie in the back, Castillo and Chim in the front with Hen driving the ambulance back with Martin. 

It’s quiet but he can hear Athena’s grunts and screams in his ears as the piece of shit brutalized her. He can hear an echo of a gunshot, feels it ricocheting in his ribcage with his heartbeat. The silence matches the one that followed in those minutes as they feared. There were no other sounds. Nothing to confirm who’d been shot. No Athena calling for help to say she was alive. There was nothing except a gunshot.

But the bullet was for the bastard. A leg shot, but enough to hospitalize him before carting him to jail. He’s two floors above Athena, handcuffed to a bed with two officers posted outside his room. Buck had sat there and watched for an hour. Stood in the shadows and waited for the elevator to ding down the hall for another half an hour after that. Waited for the footsteps to come. Was anticipating the excuses on the man’s tongue that would have the cops stepping away. 

He stopped Bobby from going in there and doing what Buck would’ve done if he’d had to listen to Maddie or _anyone_ he loved so deeply get so violated and have to think for three minutes and twelve seconds that he’d lost them. (He counted the seconds in his head, trying to think of scenarios he’d learned in the field that would give them an idea of how long Athena would have to live if she was bleeding out but still alive.)

Bobby had been wrecked. Broke down crying in Buck’s arms as soon as he dragged him into the bathroom to stop him from making a mistake. He’d crumpled, crying out _I can’t lose anymore please God make it stop I’ll do whatever you want just stop trying to take people from me just take me instead_.

He thought back to getting out of the cab when they got there. Saw level-headed Bobby go for the axe and wanted to stop him, until Eddie just wordlessly grabbed two more weapons and handed one to Buck without breaking stride. Can’t imagine what it must’ve been like in Bobby’s head to think he’d lost another wife so soon. Realizes that Eddie understood that feeling. The helplessness.

He’d been there with Maddie when she’d gone missing. Remembers the absolute blind fucking panic that overtook everything in his brain the moment he saw Chimney bleeding out on the ground. Remembers realizing she was missing and knowing so deeply in his gut that _Doug had her_. Sue coming to the same conclusion on the other end of the phone hadn’t helped.

He was spiraling. His chest was so tight that nothing could get in. Oxygen didn’t exist. It felt like his brain was detached and floating around in liquid inside his skill and his vision was cloudy and spotty and _tilting_ in both the memory and real life…

“Buck?” Eddie’s voice is sharp, pulling Buck from his thoughts and calming his heart rate. The truck is parked in the house, everyone else is already out of it. Eddie’s standing outside the door, staring in like it wasn’t the first time he said his name. Something must be all over Buck’s face because his own softens, “You good?” 

“No.” Buck admits roughly, “I need to see Maddie.”

He knows she took the call. Knows she’s a Buckley and is going to use humor to deflect it but it will affect her later. He knows she’s not staying over at Chimney’s because she wouldn’t risk having a nightmare with him. Just like Buck does with people. 

“Alright, let’s go,” Eddie says after a beat, stepping aside so Buck can get out. “I’ll drop you on my way home.”

If Buck were thinking clearly, he’d worry about his car and getting to work in the morning, but he just has this uneasy feeling in his stomach and he needs to see his sister. He doesn’t even worry about showering even though he knows he should. There’s no blood left on him from Athena, but he feels like it imprinted him. It’d just been a small smear from her hand as he’d walked with her to the ambulance. He had to hold her hand for just a moment, not squeezing, just a soft touch, for his own peace of mind. Her finger had jerked reflectively against his and left a small trail of blood.

He’d almost vomited on the scene when he realized after the ambulance had driven off and Eddie was trying to get him into the truck to get to the hospital before everyone left without him. Eddie’s such a dad, caring for people in dire situations without thinking of his own health and safety. 

The drive is quiet until Buck’s mouth gets ahead of his brain, “Are you okay?”

Eddie seems a little surprised by the question, shrugs it off, “I can’t imagine what Cap is going through…”

“That’s not what I asked and not exactly true.” Buck interrupts. Eddie glances at him sharply. 

“What do you mean?”

“Shannon’s dead.” It’s a little harsh and Eddie’s face closes down immediately, “You almost lost Chris. You almost lost yourself.”

“I almost lost my Abuela this morning just because of old age and not knowing if she’ll wake up. We almost lost Athena tonight. We’ve almost lost Chim. We’ve almost lost you at least three times since I’ve met you, for fuck’s sake, Buck.” He sounds angry, like he’s trying to blame someone but there’s no one there. So he pulls himself together and is calmer when he speaks again, like he shoved it all right back down, ”We almost lose people every day, that’s our job.” 

“All true but still doesn’t tell me if you’re okay.”

Eddie’s fingers tightened around the wheel to the point of whiting out his knuckles. “What does it matter?”

“Because when I wasn’t okay, all I wanted was for someone to ask me if I was and give me that hand to reach out to and accept help because I can’t swallow my pride and ask for it when I was told growing up that it’s weak to feel your own emotions.” 

Eddie pulls into a spot in front of Maddie’s apartment complex. He turns off the car but makes no move to do anything else. Just stares forward. 

“It matters because I care about you and that’s why I’m asking.” Buck sighs, resigning to the fact that Eddie just… _won’t_. “When I said that I got your back, I meant that with everything, man. I know you swallow things. Like when I told you Christopher was gone.” Buck knows he’s digging a little, trying to get something from Eddie and he doesn’t really know why. “I watched your face. You just literally _swallowed_ and nodded. You accepted it and were going to move on. Just like you did with Shannon. And then you got arrested,” Eddie’s look is shocked, like he thought he’d covered that well, “yeah, nice try but you can’t say something like that and not expect me to look into it. I found it online. Great mugshot, by the way. That’s my point, Eddie. You bottle everything because you don’t think you have anyone that can handle your shit, but you do. You have a family with the 118. You’ve got me, no matter what.”

Buck wants to reach out. He wants to grab Eddie’s hand and twine their fingers together. It’s the feelings of the non-platonic type that he tries to shove down all the time but still split his chest open and pour out into everything he does around Eddie. 

After the rocky start, Buck just wanted to help Eddie. Because he saw who Eddie was: someone that just accepted things and moved forward. Buck suspected it had to do with his army training and probably his dad’s ethic. Eddie’s mentioned only bits and pieces but Buck gets it. Sometimes, words from a parent fuck you up more than anything else. But he just _accepts_ shit. Like he doesn’t deserve better and should just settle because he’s lucky he has what he has. 

But he deserves so much more and Buck can’t give it to him in the way he wishes he could but he can do it in the best way he knows to: by helping. So he called Carla for Eddie. He researched and bought a skateboard for Christopher so Eddie didn’t feel like a failure.

He tried to move the Earth to get back to Eddie weeks ago.

Literally.

He’s bisexual, has eyes, and _knows_ Eddie. Of course he’s attracted to him. But he knows he _can’t_. There are only a handful of people that Buck wouldn’t recover from if they left him. Number one is Maddie, two and three belong to Eddie and Christopher. They wormed their way right into his heart and it _aches_ with how much he wishes he could have them sometimes. 

He wishes he could be brave and reach out for Eddie’s hand, his mouth, his love. 

But the ache that lives in his chest every day that he sees Eddie’s smile or hears his laugh or feels him by his side or smells him, the ache that wishes he could _taste_ , is more bearable than the one that would be there in the absence of the Diaz family entirely.

“Just remember, please? I’m gonna be selfish. I can’t lose anyone. I’ve never had to bury anyone that I love. Please don’t let it be you.” Buck gets out of the truck then, leaving Eddie staring after him open-mouthed. 

He’s halfway into the courtyard, his heart roaring in his ears and pounding in his chest as his breath begins to creep up faster on him. He knows the beginnings of the anxiety attack coming on. Has felt at the edge of a precipice since they heard Athena’s call sign. 

Maddie opens the door to him and for a split second, Buck is back in a snowy forest with adrenaline coursing through his veins and the cold seizing his lungs and he tried not think about whether or not he’d find Maddie’s body and what it’d feel like to murder someone because yeah, he knows how Bobby felt tonight because that’s how he felt with Maddie. He would’ve killed Doug. 

He looks at her for a moment and his vision splits her; whole real and healthy Maddie with the Maddie that was pale, bruised and slowly bleeding to death amongst the pure snow. His heart jumps into his throat, choking him as he tries to swallow around it to find the words just to greet her. 

He’s quiet for too long though, lost in the upheaval of memories and her face falls for an instant, “Athena?”

“No!” Buck says quickly, watching as she sags in relief. “I just needed to see you.” 

Maddie’s face cracks open. Her facade dropping as she rushes at her little brother to nestle herself against his chest. “I wanted to call out to her and scream her name until she answered so I knew if she was okay but we aren’t allowed to. We have to keep it professional. I was so scared for her, Buck.” 

“Me too.” His voice is hoarse as he holds onto Maddie. She’s alive, she’s breathing and in his arms. “Bobby wouldn’t switch the channels. We listened too.” His voice breaks as the tears finally break through. “Maybe after a few days, it’d be a good idea for you to go talk to her. You might be able to help her.” His arms tighten around her to the point that he knows he’s putting her in discomfort for a minute, but she squeezes him back just as tightly and knows she needed this as well.

Maddie nods against his chest in agreement, both women understanding the brutal hand of a man demanding power.

Athena is alive and in the hospital, with Bobby who is also alive physically but probably dying under the weight of his own fears. Michael, May, and Harry are more than likely there as well, alive.

Maddie is alive and in his arms, clinging desperately and probably wishing she could see Chimney, who is also still alive and not bleeding out in the courtyard behind him. 

Hen, Karen, Denny, and Nia are safe and well at home, all alive. 

Christopher is alive and didn’t get swept away to drown alone in the dark, afraid, after Buck lost him. He’s with Carla who’s alive and probably having a glass of wine while Chris sleeps until Eddie gets home. 

Eddie is alive and made it out of the well to return home to Chris and Buck and, in his private thoughts, he can have a moment to allow himself to pretend he’s part of that unit. 

Everything will be okay.

Buck asks to stay with his sister for the night at the same time she asks if he’d stay with her. They’ll setup in the living room with pillows from the couch and blankets from her room, watching reruns of sitcoms from decades past until they both fall asleep. 

Until then, Buck’s okay just holding his sister and basking in everyone he loves being survivors.

**Author's Note:**

> This poured out of me without conscious thought and is my first time in Buck's POV. I have a feeling I'll write a second piece once the next episode airs that finishes up Buck/Eddie's conversation from this.


End file.
